Good work, good director

Opening caption: On the western border of Missouri, it is not the army but the neighbors who fought in the American Civil War. The jungle guerrillas in the south fought hard, but they had no chance of winning. They attacked the northern army and the pro-northern guerrillas. No matter which side they turned to, they were in danger. But the people in the gap between the north and the south are more dangerous... I think this great epic work is the most neglected among Li Ang’s many masterpieces.

The picture, the lens, the characters are all good.

Ang Lee finished filming "Sense and Emotion" in 1996, and handed over "Ice Storm" in 1997. Piaofeng's reputation is very good. In 1999, "Riding with the Devil" was very popular at the box office. IMDB scored only 6.6 points. He seemed to have encountered Waterloo, who was pursuing the victory, but fortunately he handed over "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" a year later.

If "Pushing Hands", "Wedding Banquet", and "Diet Men and Women" are taken as Lee's family trilogy, then Lee's filming of "Li", "Ice" and "And" for Westerners in the United States is both a clarion call and accumulation for entering Hollywood. It is also his temptation and tentacles for the Western world based on the psychology and identity of the Orientals, especially the Chinese.

I tried to explain why this work was so coldly received in the United States. If I compare it to Spielberg’s film reflecting the civil war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, it’s not known in the domestic market. The northerners who may have won think this is not mainstream enough, especially when the protagonist is a German and a black man who has been determined to participate in the southern guerrillas... The southerners think this is too mainstream, and the description of the southern guerrillas is cruel and vicious... …This is just my guesswork.

Liu Xinglong has a novel called "Shengtianmenkou", which was shortlisted for the 7th Mao Dun Literature Award. Recently, I am going to make a TV series. It is about two families and their families in a small town called Tianmenkou in the Dabie Mountains from the beginning of the last century to the 1960s. The story of the fate of the characters around. I suddenly felt that it was similar. Or the country, or the communists. In that era, do you have a middle way to go? When the pro-communist return home group comes back, you want to behead and burn your family, and when the rich and powerful get together, you want your family to be destroyed...

Xing, people suffer, die, people suffer. The same for thousands of years.

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